and if it's at all possible answer it because this will save us all much time and writing:

There are many "questionable" elements in terms of what I would call "micro-balance", for example, very powerful abilities (for Necro, for example), very powerful caster creatures (Sprites, Archmages), very different creature strength and weaknesses, very powerful hero specials and "race specific skills", very different resource demands...
It strikes me very "odd" that exactly those factions that have the most obvious advantages in Hero skills and abilities and special creatures are those with staggering resource demands.
Might this be by design?
Is this game a game of "macro-balance". A game where you have a town with lvl 1 unit that is able to put out the lvl 7 unit of the easy-to-build-up Haven because that town will have a hard time getting its own level 7?
So: 2 "easy and obvious" towns (Haven and Inferno) getting their full army early on and depending very much (Haven) and nut just as much, but still (Inferno) on might.
2 not so easy towns: Dungeon (low numbers, but still fairly easy to build). More magical heroes, but massively strong creatures.
And Necro: difficult to build, but powerful hero abilites great mid-game creatures and of course Necromancy and the ability to make use of each troop
2 very difficult towns to build: Preserve and Academy (one might and one magic): staggering resource demands, high cost (I suppose that artifact constructing will cost a fortune for the Academy), but with units that might make a hell of a difference.

Is that so? If that's the game intention, please tell us, because that will make a big difference in testing things out. Right?

and if it's at all possible answer it because this will save us all much time and writing:

There are many "questionable" elements in terms of what I would call "micro-balance", for example, very powerful abilities (for Necro, for example), very powerful caster creatures (Sprites, Archmages), very different creature strength and weaknesses, very powerful hero specials and "race specific skills", very different resource demands...
It strikes me very "odd" that exactly those factions that have the most obvious advantages in Hero skills and abilities and special creatures are those with staggering resource demands.
Might this be by design?
Is this game a game of "macro-balance". A game where you have a town with lvl 1 unit that is able to put out the lvl 7 unit of the easy-to-build-up Haven because that town will have a hard time getting its own level 7?
So: 2 "easy and obvious" towns (Haven and Inferno) getting their full army early on and depending very much (Haven) and nut just as much, but still (Inferno) on might.
2 not so easy towns: Dungeon (low numbers, but still fairly easy to build). More magical heroes, but massively strong creatures.
And Necro: difficult to build, but powerful hero abilites great mid-game creatures and of course Necromancy and the ability to make use of each troop
2 very difficult towns to build: Preserve and Academy (one might and one magic): staggering resource demands, high cost (I suppose that artifact constructing will cost a fortune for the Academy), but with units that might make a hell of a difference.

Is that so? If that's the game intention, please tell us, because that will make a big difference in testing things out. Right?

Hi all! My name is Aleksei Gilenko, I'm one of the game designers working on Heroes 5. I'm using Alexander Mishulin's login to look at beta forums every now and then and this time Fabrice asked me answer this question.

You know, I was really pleased to hear it asked, because that was exactly our initial goal to differentiate races by "difficulty of handling".

That is, we intended to gradually lift up the complexity of playing for a given race as campaign progresses, in the following order: Haven-Inferno-Necropolis-Dungeon-Sylvan-Academy.

I mean, it is quite easy to grasp the concept of a "blessed" might beyond Haven or a raw firepower of Inferno. Necromancy needs a little more thought to be put in strategic planning, while Warlocks should shine only with accurate and appropriate tactical decisions on a battlefield. Sylvan and Academy are the most difficult races to control, as their powers are not as "straight-put" as with other races.

That said, we, of course, wanted the overall power of each race to be more or less equal, so that none of the races has superiority in MP.

Balance and prices are yet to be further revised though, but I am glad to hear the design worked as we planned.

And now straight to the point. I see very hard to balance factions being so different and with so powerful specials and units abilities. But what I see even harder is how to protect the AI against the exploits we should get with those abilities: wraiths abilitie, paladin cure used on archangels, heroes specials that make appear a stack of earth elementals (and other with wights I think), for each own dead stack, of course sprites and magi phantom image spell... With all that I think AI will have a very hard time and neutral monsters will be quite easy to defeat unless there are masses of them, (again as in H4, which is something I really disliked).

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Jolly-Joker:
2 very difficult towns to build: Preserve and Academy (one might and one magic): staggering resource demands, high cost (I suppose that artifact constructing will cost a fortune for the Academy), but with units that might make a hell of a difference. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
I see it for the Sylvan, they have very good units with very high initiative. But academy?, what do they have to compensate?. I admit that I haven't been able to use the higher units of any town, because due to performance my games aren't very long. However the feeling that I have right now with academy is that they just have the massive unbalanaced magi, which should be reworked anyway, but besides that they are in a very bad position regarding resources demands.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Valaddin:
Hi all! My name is Aleksei Gilenko, I'm one of the game designers working on Heroes 5. I'm using Alexander Mishulin's login to look at beta forums every now and then and this time Fabrice asked me answer this question.

You know, I was really pleased to hear it asked, because that was exactly our initial goal to differentiate races by "difficulty of handling".

That is, we intended to gradually lift up the complexity of playing for a given race as campaign progresses, in the following order: Haven-Inferno-Necropolis-Dungeon-Sylvan-Academy.

I mean, it is quite easy to grasp the concept of a "blessed" might beyond Haven or a raw firepower of Inferno. Necromancy needs a little more thought to be put in strategic planning, while Warlocks should shine only with accurate and appropriate tactical decisions on a battlefield. Sylvan and Academy are the most difficult races to control, as their powers are not as "straight-put" as with other races.

That said, we, of course, wanted the overall power of each race to be more or less equal, so that none of the races has superiority in MP.

Balance and prices are yet to be further revised though, but I am glad to hear the design worked as we planned. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Do I have permission to post this in the beta forum?

Well, this is rather interesting and I'm pretty pround of being the first to note that this might be the overall design concept.
While this is WELL in the tradition of the first HOMM games I sure hope you know what kind of BIIIIIIG trouble you've gotten yourself into.
Don't get me wrong. I applaud this design decision and will do my utmost best to help you balancing things. Can I ask some questions directly to get confirmation of more details, for example (and starters):
1) Preserve market shows better exchange rates: bug or design? (balancing tool or not?)
2) Resource Silo of Dungeon cost no ore, bug or design? (Bug, I expect)
3) Are you aware of the consequences of single level casting units like Sprites and Archmages?
4) Would you be prepared to program the AI to deploy neutral stacks in various different formations all making use of single split-off units for overall AI strengthening?........

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by RexMund1:
Good Questions JJ...I'm glad you were found and invited into the forums and testing

I wish I could play more with my system so I could be of more use myself. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
Hi, Rex.
Playing for me is pretty slow, too. Just was enough to get a crude picture, it seems
Balancing this will be hell. It's more Heroes 2 than people would have ever thought possible, it seems. Inferno has replaced the Barbarians and Dungeon and Preserve had a role change, but in principle it's Heroes 2 - which wasn't balanced at all, but it didn't make much of a difference either.
Main thing now has to be to get the "endless"-features out: endless Sprite cloning and so on. I'm going to post a suggestion now, how to fix things.